Assassin's Creed 4 development led on current-gen consoles

PC delay is due to prioritising console development, lead designer claims.

Development on Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is being led on current-generation consoles – despite the game also making an appearance on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

In a discussion with Polygon about Assassin's Creed 4's "master version," lead designer Jean-Sebastien Decant revealed that "the technology goal we had [for AC4] was for the current-gen."

"You need to finish one and make sure that it's clean before you can then finish the others."

Decant's comments suggest that Ubisoft Montreal chose to up-port the current-gen versions of Assassin's Creed 4 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, rather than scale down a more advanced version.

The decision to target current-gen consoles first is also the reason for the PC version's delay, Decant claims.

"It all depends on what is the master version," Decant said. "If for instance, the [Xbox 360] version was the master version, or the PlayStation 3 version was the master version, then we'd need a little bit more time to adapt it for the PC. But we need to finish that other version first."